Confidant
by ZephyrLemon
Summary: A companion fic to Accomplice. Read that first or this won't make any sense. As you've all requested, this is the other side of it. Her side.


Disclaimer: I own nada of the Matrix. How I wish I did. 

A/N: Here's the other side of Accomplice that you've all been asking for. How _she_ felt about the whole thing. Please read Accomplice first, though, or this won't make sense. It may seem not to follow the format of Accomplice, but we're talking about a woman here - the side of the human species that is more prone to thought and careful examination of emotions and events and such. _Herstory_ to the max. (That's my feminist side coming out and I make no apologies for it.)

**__**

Confidant

A companion fic to Accomplice

By: Zephyr

"Do you remember the Wizard of Oz?" 

"What?" I shift to face him.

"Yeah, you know, the one with the perky girl that had amnesia or somethin' and lots of midgets and witches." He looks at me expectantly.

I can only stare back at him. He looks so sincere, almost nostalgic. I run a myriad of hazy, faraway images through my head. Finally, I pinpoint one memory of me sitting on the worn brown carpet in the middle of our living room and the small TV flickers as the brown and white tones of a movie play across the screen. I must have been about 6. I can't believe I remember that. 

"Yeah," I say, refocusing my vision on my current surroundings. 

"It's kind of ironic, don't you think?" he sounds a little contemplative. I smile inwardly, even though my lips don't move, because I realize that I'm the only one who gets to see this side of him. I sit up straighter, my back stiffening against the unforgiving wall of the lower core, and turn so my shoulders are square with his. 

"I never thought there was anything very deep about that movie," I counter his thoughtful tone with skepticism. That is the norm for our conversations. A little friendly verbal competition, never letting anything slip past the other's cynical ear. He throws a glance at me, one that suggests he's formulating his thoughts to come up with a defense statement. In return, I give him a look that dares him to come up with a worthy argument. My eyes bait him on. 

"Well, it suggests that we could be living a dream. Now we, on the outside, know that's true. But why do you think the Agents would allow such an implication to be made in a movie in the Matrix?" He leans in closer, his brow furrowed in mock persecution. 

I lean back pretending to be offended. Then I shoot back at him, "Well, I guess they thought people were just too stupid to notice or understand the connotations. They assume everyone is living blissfully in ignorance." I spit out the words with their taste of malice and hatred towards the machines. 

Once more he resumes his reclined position and slips into contemplation. He juts out his chin and runs a hand over his scalp.

"Why do you ask, anyway?" He looks up at me as though startled by my question. Shaking his head, he lets out a hoarse laugh. 

"I dunno. I guess I keep thinking that I'm going to wake up and be somewhere else. A new reality maybe, but not here. I'll just find this was all a bad dream. You know, 'Auntie Em! I'm home!'" His voice lowers and sounds almost sad, "I'm not so sure anymore that this is real." He pauses as his voice drifts off. 

Looking straight into my eyes there is something different about his. "Is this real?" It was a truly earnest question. He reaches out and tentatively lays his hand over mine. "I need to know that something is real. Are you real?" His other hand comes up to gently touch my face. The pads of his fingers slide down my cheek to trace the outline of my jaw.

I am numb. As my mind is trying to sort out the things he said, I don't feel anything. My eyelids blink to adjust my vision, which is fading into nothing. I feel nothing, so what is there to see? I just look at him. After a moment I can actually make out his features. Taking his hand, I move it away from my face. 

"What are you talking about?" I ask him quietly, still holding his hand in mine. 

"Oh, come on. Don't tell me you think this is as good as it gets," his eyes harden as he speaks. "This is not a life. I mean, what are we fighting for here anyway? People have been at this same damn war for how long? Fifty years? A hundred? Or maybe more? Look around you, we're not getting anywhere." 

A million defensive retorts come to mind but my lips are glued shut. The pasty dryness consumes my mouth and I can't pry my jaws apart. It's difficult to process the words that he is speaking. The truth of them rings clear and yet they would render everything we're doing - our very existence - moot. 

***

"_Is_ this it?" Those are the first three words I have spoken to him in several days - since that first night of confessions. Those words' despondence echoes in our eardrums, haunting the silence that hangs between us. Once the words sink in, he raises his head to look into my eyes as I stand looking down at him expectantly. Expecting what, I don't know. It seems I don't know what to expect at all anymore.

"I used to think so. Or maybe I just always hoped so; even when faced with the ironic cruelties of reality," he says quietly. His heavy sigh lingers in the small room. 

"And if it's not…" my eyes instinctively avert to the floor and absently scan the familiar imperfections and abrasions of the metal, "…then what?" My voice shrinks until it is almost inaudible. I wonder if I'm more afraid of the answer or the question itself. 

Anger suddenly flares bright in my eyes and grips my throat with its heavy hand. I try to swallow down the brunt of the emotion, though the edge still remains - the edge of something that has been growing for days. Ever since he first brought up the subject, it has been eating away at the corners of my mind. I never brought it into the front of my mind to really look at it. 

Until now. 

"Goddamnit! Why did you even bring this up?!" In my head I'm screaming but my voice only comes out hoarse and grating, barely above a conversational volume. I scuff the thick toe of my boot hard against the floor, wanting to destroy something. 

Instead, I settle for simply glaring at him. He wears a shocked expression on his usually cynical features. His posture is startled and awkward; he obviously never expected my sudden outburst. 

The fire passes from my eyes with the swiftness of a rising wind to leave only the smoldering ashes of lingering resentment. I shake my head in confusion, allowing a soft sight to escape my thinly parted lips. I feel like a traitor. 

Then again, I also had felt like I was two-timing my squad - my _real _job in my _real _life, I had thought at the time - when Morpheus first offered me the choice of two pills. After my initial hesitation, though, I felt certain I'd made the right choice. I never understood the way Cypher so consistently asked each new recruit if they felt like he did - wishing to have chosen the blue pill. 

Until now. 

Now… now. All we have is now. Am I wasting it on being here? Is even the thought of entertaining these notions a waste of now? Or has all this time spent without questions or challenges been a waste of that now - until now?

Now. 

It is late but he stays up with me on my shift. Our breath is short, not hollow like the others, asleep in their cabins in this similarly hollow ship, but taught and stretched as though it were a too small sheet pulled over a large mattress. I sit facing the monitors with my back to him. I know he is sitting against the wall behind me, sometimes watching me, sometimes not. For the whole night I pretend he's not there. 

Each of us to our own thoughts. 

Each of us to our own conclusions. 

But does any of this mental individuality change our fate? Does it affect our converging or diverging paths? 

When the overhead lights, with a desperate tempo of mechanical clicking, struggle to flicker on I am more confused than ever. Inconspicuously, we part ways and go about our separate day. 

I still feel the trace of a nearly lost hope when I'm with the other crew. Their optimism, which now strikes me as somewhat fatalistic, has a way of clinging to me. Thinking of what he said, I try to brush it off like I would a wisp of hair from my face. But at the root, it's still attached - both the hair and the words. I realize I'm only hopeless when I'm with him. Or perhaps it's hope that has been repressed so long I misname it now when it reappears. 

How can you name truth if you've only known fallacy?

I wonder what the truth feels like? 

How will I know it? Will it be through death? 

Or is the only hope in death?

Maybe that's it. Or maybe he has messed with my head so that I don't know anymore whether I want to cling to the truth or smash it into a million unrecognizable pieces so that I never have to face it. 

Perhaps the latter has already been accomplished. 

That thought sends a cold spike of an unnamed fear coursing down my spine. 

***

Later, when we talk again my mind has no trouble accepting everything he says. There is barely a glimmer of my former concerns of betrayal to "the cause". It's as though there is something I need to remember, but the more I try to figure out what it is, the further it withdraws into the shadowy recesses of my mind. For some unknown but rather unfortunate reason, it seems that in the cloudy state my head has entered I am more susceptible rather than more cautious. Somehow it all sounds so benign.

Tumors…grow…start out benign…malignant…cancer…disease…death…black…

I am nodding numbly when he asks if I'll help him with his plan. 

Scheme.

Conspiracy.

Plot.

Afterward, I am thinking of a hundred different names for this thing, which I have been drawn into. This thing, which has taken on a sentient form. It breathes its hot breath down my neck and into the private alcoves behind my ears. I can smell its rank and sour odor. Its taste is in my mouth and the back of my throat like a more metallic yet still strongly acidic bile. It makes my mind reel and my stomach shrink into a fist clenched nauseously tight. 

__

Fuck it. 

I tell myself I'm not going to go on with this. Sure, maybe for a minute, an hour, a day I understood. Maybe I feel that same pang of encroaching emptiness. 

But then again, I imagine the termination of my life on this ship if we're caught. If not the termination of my life - period - if things go awry.

Death. There is no confusion in death. It simply is. Thoughts are confusing. And scary as hell. Death, while lacking this indecisive nature, has the possibility to be even scarier still. 

I picture a quiet, peaceful end to my life. Slipping steadily but surely into a white oblivion. It feels like the slick curves of white leather that I wear in the Matrix. Yet it's as blank as the empty space of the construct. No fading to black or blacking out. Not for me. I feel as though my presence, my white against their dark, is the switch - flipped by those who would see the hope even in these hopeless times. I will light the path, wherever it might lead. That is why my death will be white. 

Right now I appear to be leading the way into a darkness that I can neither fathom the depth of or light my way out of. And so I'm being drawn deeper; feeling helpless to stop it and, at the same time, not sure I want it to stop. 

***

All I can see is the fear in Trinity's wide blue eyes. 

Utter horror.

I have never seen such unmasked emotion in the Nebuchadnezzar's second in command. 

I think back to a time before we were all tossed, haphazardly it would seem, into this predicament. _Trinity and I had been friends. Sisters in a place where there were rarely family ties. If there were, they usually weren't by blood. Except if the literal exchange of blood can be counted as the same. Maybe it makes people closer that way. _

__

Then my patience wore thin. It had a lot to do with him, though I didn't recognize it at first. I would snap at her, my trust in her abilities quickly waning without due cause. 

"You're going to lose it!" Skepticism dripped from my lips.

"No I'm not." Her reply was flat. From most people she could easily hide the hurt, which lurked at the back of her throat. I knew it, though. And I hated it. 

It seemed like there was no turning back though. I couldn't wake up in my bed and believe whatever I want to believe. No.

Too late.

I am gripping the table, only able to imagine the treacherous things he is saying on the other end of the phone. And now I realize that's what he is. 

A traitor. 

There was never a moment of innocent intent in his plan. Well, maybe.

There is always a maybe. 

Maybe he didn't really kill them. Trinity is just overreacting. That's all.

Yes.

He really did kill them.

I know that much is true when she looks at the man standing next to me, my comrade. 

Friend. 

It is rare to have a friend in the real world. And he says_ Trinity, no._

No.

All the time I am thinking about my white death. About how I know the others didn't get theirs. 

No. 

Apoc collapses, dead on the floor. A black curtain drawn over my eyes. His jacket. I grip it tightly; I never want to let go. Of him. Of me. 

No.

I look up above the black. Now she's looking at me. 

Death.

It's my turn.

Turn the switch.

On. 

For what seemed like only a minute in the grand scheme of time. Then…

__

No. Not like this, not like this.

Off.

***

Blackness. 

Then. 

Whiteness.

It's all the same.

Just white. 


End file.
